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Thursday, October 18, 2012

I don't think I've ever met a person who wasn't interested in whales. They are the largest mammals on the earth. Some species swim thousands of miles from Alaska to the Baja to have their babies and then swim the same thousands back with said babies. Moby Dick is fiction but it was based on true accounts of Sperm whales ramming whaling ships and sinking them. (A distant relative of my wife Donna, was on the Essex which was sunk by a Sperm whale, chronicled in "The Heart of the Sea.")If you've ever seen a whale close up in the sea, you know how mesmerizing it can be: Beautiful and graceful, large and thrillingly scary when they are too close! Not long ago while having coffee at Roadrunner Cafe, I met a man who has made a career out of watching whales, Urmas Kaldveer. Urmas has been doing scientific research on the great whales for years, observing them from all sizes of watercraft including his kayak and from below with diving gear. He sat with me for quite awhile, answering my uneducated questions with much patience. I was a little envious until it dawned on me that he has probably logged thousands of hours on his word processor while recording his work. Whew!If you see him around Los Barriles, you might be able to corner him and chat for a bit. If you do, don't tell him I said it was ok. If you don't have that chance, you can read in detail what he's done, learned and experienced in his book, THE OTHERS “The Whale People.” It was published by Balboa Press and is now available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and of course Balboa Press. You can also read about many of his experiences on his blog which includes some great photographs.